By Yemisi Sawyer

I feel Old

Yeah yeah, I know all the ready feel good phrases like ‘’Age is nothing but a number’’, and ‘’You are only as old as you feel.’’ Well I feel approximately a hundred and five…

This hit home for me a couple of days ago at my friends wedding, grooving with the bride and groom at the post wedding afterparty. I danced for approximately 2 hours, with many many intermittent breaks due to aching joints, wheezing, sweating and sore toes from the frighteningly high heels I was wearing. I had a fabulous time, but got home before midnight incredibly knackered and curled up in front of the tv with an audible sigh of relief…

From this comfy position, I remembered with fondness my uni days, dancing the night away with five of my favourite sisters in crime, scantily clad and high on nothing but adrenalin and water, still grooving when they were switching on the lights and kicking people out in the morning and somehow managing to get to class bright eyed, bushy tailed and full of beans…

And I felt old.
I thought about how scandalized I get everytime I see 13 year olds in the mall with hotpants on or thongs hanging out of their jeans (I didnt even know what a thong was at 13!) and I look back at clothes I had the temerity, not to mention the hot figure, to wear in years past and I’m amazed at my own one time boldness.

Gosh I feel old.
My day to day struggle with the four elements -no, Im not talking about Water, Earth, Fire and Air but Love Handles, Wrinkles, Stretch marks and Gravity- make me realise that the days of stuffing my face with wanton abandon and treating my body like an amusement park without the fear of consequences are well and truly over. For those of you in your teens and twenties, I implore you to enjoy it now…while it lasts.

I feel particularly old when I find myself dying to punish other peoples children when I see them being rude or acting inappropriately and how peace and quiet now seems to triumph for me over thumping basslines and huge crowds…

Sigh…
But on the plus side, I’m lucky enough to be blessed with youthful looks that mean I still have toasters who are still in University and think I’m 25 tops (hahahaha!) and most people who’ve known me for years think I look pretty much the same. (even though I know the amount of work that goes on behind the scenes to make this appear to be true.)

Also being older means you tend to have more of a sense of yourself and less of a herd mentality. You do and say what you think is best for you and hopefully have a bit more life experience and have left most of your young and clueless days behind. You may look back with fondness on your high octane days of Red Bull fuelled fun, but you also thank God you’re not that terribly insecure, unsure young man or woman who still didn’t know what they wanted to be when they grew up and allowed other peoples views and hangups become the basis for your fears and decisions. You’ve learned how to kick some butts and take some names, how to kiss the sky and how to dance between raindrops in the rainstorms of your life. You may have felt real, excruciating pain in love and life and yet emerged like a phoenix rising from the ashes…

Yeah, being confronted with statistics that are not so vital anymore can seem depressing, and yes my bed on a Friday night nowadays feels like the place in the world I’d most rather be in, but I still have a lot to be grateful for and so so much to look forward to.

I may feel old, but hey I’m still here.